SPECIAL REPORT

Grains of Truth

Food Producers Suffer Hunger, Poverty

“Kawitang palakol”
and “gawat” are terms that refer to times when food is scarce,
usually the weeks before harvest season when the farmers have spent all
their money on fertilizers and pesticides and harvest time is still far
away. The considerable increases in the prices of farm inputs and terribly
low price of palay ((unmilled rice) have however made the whole year a
period of “gawat” for the Filipino farmers.

BY DABET CASTAÑEDABulatlat

Celestino Ariel, 60,
started farming at the age of 18. His family is a tenant, tilling a
three-hectare farm in Barangay (village) San Roque, Naic in Cavite
province, 39 kms south of Manila.

To work their land,
Mang Celestino borrowed P12,000 (US$214.29 at US$1=PhP56) from a local
money lender. The contract he signed stated he should pay one cavan of
palay per P1,000 he borrowed in addition to the whole amount loaned.

The amount he
borrowed however was barely enough to shoulder all expenses: farm inputs
at P6,230, labor cost from planting to harvesting at P 4,575, and rental
of farm equipment at P1,500 – totaling P12,305.

When harvest season
came, Mang Celestino’s one hectare reaped a total of 80 sacks of palay. He
used the 10 cavans to pay the thresher operator and another 15 cavans to
pay the farm workers who helped harvest his products. He also paid P200
to the neighbors who helped him carry the products home (hakot).

Less the 12 cavans he
needed to give to the moneylender in addition to the P 12,000 he borrowed,
Mang Celestino was left with exactly 33 cavans.

However, because of
the very low farm gate price – P7 per kilo or P175 at 25 kilos per cavan
– he was left with only a total of P7,525. He was P4,475 short for his
P12,000 loan.

Mang Celestino said
he had to borrow money from his 80-year-old mother, Maria, to add to his
loan payment.

Landlessness

Mira Luna Varon, 50,
a widow with four children, is a former settler in the uplands of western
Tarlac, 109 kms north of Manila. Her family used to till six hectares of
land. In an interview with Bulatlat, Aling Mira said she and her
neighbors were given a stewardship of the land they occupied by the local
government in 1990. Harvests then were good because they had enough land
to till, she said.

In 1998, Aling Mira
said the provincial government under Gov. Arturo Yap took around 200
hectares of land in the mountains, including Aling Mira’s. Aling Mira and
her family were then driven out to look for land to till in the lowlands.
Aling Mira found a hectare of idle land which, after being cleared of tall
grasses, has served as her family’s source of livelihood and where their
new home stands.

All of Aling Mira’s
children have graduated from high school and as much as she wants to send
them to college, they are now all tied up in farm production. “Wala
rin akong pera na ipampapa-aral sa kanila” (I have no money to send
them to school), she said.

The fear of being
evicted again from the land they are tilling is very intense for the
family since they do not have a land title. “Wala kaming kasiguruhan
dito” (We have no security here), she said.

Meanwhile, not far
from Aling Mira’s land is the land being tilled by Bella Reyla. Aling
Bella is tilling a hectare of land owned by Paulino Rela, a small
landowner who owns eight hectares of farmland.

Their landlord-tenant
relationship is what they call buwisan: the landowner gets 25
percent of the total production while the tiller gets 75 percent but
shoulders all the production cost.

Aling Mira and Aling
Bella are not alone in their plight. Research by the Kilusang Magbubukid
sa Pilipinas (KMP or Philippine Peasant Movement) shows that 70 percent of
farmers nationwide are landless.

Backward
agriculture

Agricultural
production in the Philippines remains agonizingly backward to this day.
Although big agriculture-based corporations – such as canned pineapple
producer Dole-Philippines in Cagayan de Oro, southern Philippines or the
sugar producer Hacienda Luisita Incorporated in Tarlac – use high-tech
machinery for their farm production and harvesting, the lowly Filipino
farmers continue to make do with the age-old plow and slow-paced carabao.

To
prepare the land for planting, farmers have to rent hand tractor, at the
following rates:

Table 1Cost of Hand Tractor Rental

Province

Rental Cost per Hectare

Cagayan Valley

P 1,200

Tarlac

P 1,500

Nueva Ecija

P 2,000

Cavite

P 1,500

Meanwhile, harvesting
is still done by hand, using hand-held sickle. Later, the palay grains are
spread on cemented ground and dried slowly under the sun.

High cost of farm inputs

Eligio Macagba, 66, owns more than three
hectares of land in Barangay San Luis, Roxas in Isabela province. As an
agrarian reform beneficiary, he paid the government P3,070 a year for 15
years, from 1974 to 1989, after which he was given a land title.

Although he owns the land he tills, Mang
Eligio, in an interview with Bulatlat, still complained of the high
price of farm inputs.

His expenses last planting season included:
hybrid seeds at P 1,200 per sack and used two sacks per hectare for a
total of P7,200; urea fertilizer at P820 per sack and used two sacks per
hectare or a total of P 4,920; and 16-20-0 fertilizer at P800 per sack and
used three sacks per hectare for a total of P7,200.

He also had to use two kinds of pesticides:
three quarts of herbicide per hectare at P400 per quart or a total of
P3,600 and three quarts per hectare of the pesticide to protect the
ricefield from kuhol at P1,000 per quart or a total of P9,000.

Mang Eligio also paid
10 seasonal farm workers P1,000 per hectare or a total of P3,000 for
planting and another P2,880 per hectare for eight farm workers for
bunot-punla (harvesting) or a total of P8,640.

For his three hectares
of land, Mang Eligio shelled out a total of P43,560 for farm inputs and
farm workers’ wages.

These
costs however vary from province to province. (See table 2).

Table 2
Cost of Farm Inputs and Wage of Planters per Hectare

Province

Seeds

Fertilizers

Pesticides

Wage
of Planters (Mananananim)

Total Cost

Cagayan Valley

P 1,200

P 1,620

P 1,400

P 2,700

P 6,920

Tarlac

P 1,500

P 4,400

P 1,790

P 1,800

P 9,490

Nueva Ecija

P 1,600

P 14,340

P 2,280

NA

P 18,220

Cavite

P 2,000

P 1,440

P 1,350

P 2,000

P 6,230

Note: Rate cost for Nueva Ecija was based on planting by sabog.
Regular rate for planters is P 1,600 to P 2,000.

According to Joseph
Canlas, chair of the Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL or
Alliance of Peasants in Central Luzon), the price of fertilizers has
doubled this year as compared to last year making lives more miserable for
small farmers. From P420 per sack, the price of urea has reached P850.
Another fertilizer, the 141414 or triple katorse today cost P675
per sack from P375 last year.

Struggling for survival

Last Oct. 20, some
1,500 farmers from Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog
trooped to Manila to voice their plight. They held what they called a
“street conference” in front of the Department of Agriculture’s main gate
in Quezon City.

The farmers had
declared a two-day farm strike to decry their worsening situation. Their
demand: an increase in palay’s farm gate price which now ranges from P7 to
P10 a kilo. The farmers are seeking that it be raised to P15 per kilo.

If the peasants’
demand is met, Mang Celestino would get a gross income of P 16,125. “Makakabayad
ako sa utang at may matitira pang pera kahit konti” (I can pay my
debts and there could be something left), he said.

But given that a
family of six in Region II where Mang Celestino’s province is located
needs an average of P455 a day or P13,650 a month to survive, whatever
extra he would have left after paying off his debts would still never be
enough for his family to live on, until the next harvest season.

Table 4
Farm Gate Price

Province

Farm Gate Price of Palay

Cagayan Valley

P6.80 to P8

Tarlac

P7.80 to P9.50

Nueva Ecija

P7.50

Cavite

P7.00

The KMP in a statement
said that the price of palay has remained the same since 1990.

KMP secretary-general
Danilo Ramos, himself a peasant from Bulacan, 40 kms south of Manila,
suggested that the government, through the National Food Authority (NFA),
should increase its procurement of locally-produced rice to 25 percent
from its mandated 10 percent.

“The government should
buy more of the farmers’ produce so they would not be forced to sell to
unscrupulous traders,” he said.

The peasant leader
added that in the past few years, the NFA only buys one percent of the
total amount of locally produced rice. He said this is due to the Arroyo
government’s policy of trade liberalization that allows the entry of
foreign produced rice that cost lower at the world market.

The government’s
policy stated that the liberalization of the rice industry would make the
cost of rice cheaper in the local market.

On the contrary, Ramos
said that there has been a 100 to 300 percent average increase in the
price of rice since 1994 when the country entered the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and, a year later, the World Trade Organization (WTO).

KMP statistics show
that in 1994, NFA rice cost P8.44 a kilo; ordinary rice is P8.86 and
special rice is P9.50. Today, NFA rice already cost P16 a kilo; ordinary
rice is priced from P17 to P18 while special rice varies from P20 to P28.

But while the local
market price of rice has increased by 100 to 300 percent in 16 years, the
farm gate price of palay is nailed down to its price since 1990.

“Nagsusumikap kami
pero wala naman kaming napapala” (We’re working very hard but we get
nothing), said Aling Mira adding that she and thousands of farmers like
her hope that the government will listen and take action to their demand
of raising the farm gate price of palay. “Sana
unawain kaming mga mahihirap”
(They should listen to us), she said adding that it has been decades that
they feel the pain of the irony that the primary food producers in the
country are the ones who are left hungry and poor. Bulatlat